ection>
Set in Uganda of the sixties with bookends in India and New York, this doctor’s story tells of a turbulent political time when colonial Uganda graduated to self-rule. But most of all it tells doctoring tales made delicate by seeing them through the heart. It was a time in medicine before evidential imperatives removed the romance.
“With clarity, drama, and humor, this book creates a family story, a picture of an African nation in the throes of political upheaval, and an original and illuminating view of medical needs and practices in circumstances that exist today in many parts of the world. The complex harmonies of the song in Dr. Tejani’s head will resonate for a wide variety of readers.”—Carol Sicherman, Professor Emerita of English, Lehman College, City University of New York, and author of Becoming an African University: Makerere 1922-2000.
“Dr. Tejani’s unique meld of skill and compassion radiates throughout this text which will touch both physician and lay readers alike. This book is an important contribution to world literature.” —Frank A. Chervenak, M.D., Given Foundation Professor and Chairman President of the World Association of Perinatal Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, New York Weill Cornell Medical Center.
“Nergesh Tejani is a terrific writer. Her work has inspired some of the scenes in my book Cutting for Stone. Her stories are compelling and would be of great interest to the general reader and the medical reader alike. Her subject is often exotic, often with international themes and full of pithy observations and wisdom.”—Abraham Verghese,Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine, Senior Associate Chair, Department of Medicine, Stanford University Medical Center.
Nergesh Tejani is Professor Emerita of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the New York Medical College and Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.After medical school in India, she married a Ugandan colleague and moved to Kampala, where she spent the next eleven years of her life. She and her family moved to New York, where she sub-specialized in maternal-fetal medicine. She spent the next three decades in academic obstetrics and gynecology.She presently resides in Brooklyn, New York.
I Hear a Song
in My Head
A Memoir in Stories of Love, Fear, Doctoring, and Flight
Nergesh Tejani, M.D.
Washington, DC
Copyright © 2012 by Nergesh Tejani
New Academia Publishing, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.
Published in eBook format by SCARITH/New Academia Publishing
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9855-6984-6
An imprint of New Academia Publishing
New Academia Publishing
PO Box 27420, Washington, DC 20038-7420
To all my beloveds
Reproduced with permission:
Tejani, Nergesh. Gentle Hands Lancet 1997; 349 (Issue 9064): 1562.
Tejani, Nergesh. Unspeakable Deeds Obstet Gynecol 2008; 111:187-188.
Tejani, Nergesh. Fistula Obstet Gynecol 2000; 96 1009-1010.
Acknowledgements
After my husband, Amir, died, the only times that I spent in relative peace were when I was asleep or writing of him. I chose to write about the most event-filled and exciting time of my life—the eleven years we spent in Kampala, Uganda, East Africa. This might be the only positive thing that was born as a result of his death—a celebration of those African years.
My thanks to Emily Pechefsky, that rigorous English scholar with whom I share two grandchildren. She read my writings with an unflinching eye and honest, sometimes ruthless, critiques. And in her acerbic manner, she convinced me that I had a voice that others may care to hear. And to Carol Sicherman who painstakingly edited my meandering thoughts. My thanks to Karen Getchell who carefully picked up after me.
And I thank Gareth Barberton, my co-trainee in Kampala and my companion in the London months. He asked, cajoled, commanded me to write of my life. And to do it fast or he may not be around to read the story.
Prologue
The White Coat
The date was December 19th, 1969. Late one velvet African night we returned home after an evening with friends at the Leopard’s Lair—a Western-style nightclub with local spirit. The friends we had been with called later that night, telling us that Prime Minister Obote had been shot and injured. He was attending a political rally close to our home and someone, suspected to be a dispossessed Muganda, had tried to assassinate him. The bullet had gone through his jaw, and he had been taken to Mulago Hospital.
Next morning, I got a call from the small hospital where I worked. Mrs. Patel was in labor. She had regular contractions, reassuring fetal heart tones and was five centimeters dilated. I’m coming…I’m coming.
Got my six-year-old Rushna ready for school, took my three-year-old Cena across the road to nursery school and fed my one-year-old Sharyn. Combining work with being a mother was now natural and smooth.
I donned my white doctor’s coat and took off in my sportsy Triumph, forgetting the events of the night before. The road to the hospital went past Mulago Hospital. I was stopped at a road block near the hospital by a clattering army presence. ‘Out of your cars and open the trunk,’ was the bark. Out of the car was fine, but I knew the trunk of my car did not open. A smallish knot formed in my upper abdomen.
An Indian couple climbed out of the van in front of me —a man and his diminutive wife, I assumed. Approaching them, bayonet poised, was an oversized human in polished boots and starched khakis.
‘We were searched before,’ whispered the woman in Swahili.
The man in the boots turned on her. She was no higher than his armpit. The handle of his bayonet cracked across her head and she lay quietly across the road. Her husband raised both his arms in a sign of surrender. A frozen scene before me—a raised lethal weapon, a tiny woman on the ground and her protector, pale and speechless.
I turned away. There was no question of helping. Also, ‘boots’ was walking toward me. I had a sickening remembrance of the unopenable trunk.
He
